


Somewhere Between the Bus Leagues and the Bigs

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-11
Updated: 2011-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:11:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By all means, let's send teenagers to fight our baseball wars for us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere Between the Bus Leagues and the Bigs

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted May 2011.

Somewhere Between the Bus Leagues and the Bigs  
By Candle Beck

 

And it's the strangest thing that's ever happened to Madison Bumgarner, there's no question about that.

Buster Posey hits a three-run go-ahead home run in the top of the ninth inning against the Bakersfield Blaze, a towering shot into the hollowed-out blue sky, and after he romps around the bases and crashes gleefully into the pack of his teammates waiting for him in the dugout, after they pound his bare head (helmet still spinning in the dirt near first base, one of the batboys darting out to it) and shake him by the shoulders until his huge toothy grin looks rattly and loose, after he breaks off whooping and goes to the cooler to pour about six Dixie cups of water down his throat, everybody milling around and finding their seats again while laughing and back-clapping, after all that, their manager tells Posey, "That'll do, son," and scribbles the back-up catcher's name on his card for the bottom of the ninth, so Posey grabs his guards and gear off the bench and shoves it into Bumgarner's arms, saying, "Help me out with that shit will ya," without any kind of question to it, not that Bumgarner would ever consider saying no, of course, and then Posey gathers up his bats and glove and leads the way down the stairs and into the tunnel where the guys' voices rebound, echoing, and it seems dimmer than it actually is after the nuclear glare of the sun--Bumgarner is having trouble figuring out his right from his left, and he has a few other small concerns.

But Buster Posey is the first thing to solidify, broad-shouldered in front of him, and Bumgarner follows him down the hall, the rabble of their teammates fading away behind. Posey's short hair is a dark wheat color and sticks up all over his head by the end of the game, once he's out of the mask for good.

They go into the equipment room and that's when it gets strange.

Bumgarner is still seeing spots, but also Posey slotting the bats into his cubby and whacking his catcher's mitt on the wall a few times to punch the dust out of it. Then Posey turns, bright eyes and quick smile because he just won them the game all by his lonesome, and Bumgarner hasn't been a pitcher for so long that he's forgotten what that one swing feels like.

Posey reaches to take his gear from Bumgarner, and one of the leg protectors slips clacking to the ground between them. Posey shoves the gear into the bin and then makes a move like he's going to pick up the one that fell, but instead his hand lands on Bumgarner's belt, and that's weird, so weird Bumgarner puts a hand out to push him away but then Posey licks his lips and Bumgarner gets distracted so that his hand ends up on _Posey's_ belt, and then suddenly it's a race to get the buckles and flies open and Posey is walking him back until he hits the door, Bumgarner twisting his shoulders and gasping, zero to hard as fuck in about fifteen seconds, terrifically aware of the strength in Posey's chest and arms as he pushes his hand into Posey's jock, fumbling numb-fingered with his cup as Posey laughs breathlessly against his neck, and--bites him. Madison makes a strangled sound. Then the cup is falling between them to land with the leg guard and Bumgarner's damp palm slides hard against Posey's dick, skin to skin and Posey swears, a throaty _fuck_ broke in half by his drawl, and Bumgarner starts panting, rubbing him off all fast and clueless, wanting to hear him make that noise again.

It doesn't last too long for either of them, Posey's warm thigh pressing in between Bumgarner's, hot breath and working mouth skidding down the line of Bumgarner's throat, and Posey sounds like he's choking as he comes, jerking against him, his grip so tight for a moment that Madison almost blacks out. Just a moment, and then Posey is back, sucking hard at Bumgarner's jaw and stroking him tight and wet and beautiful until Bumgarner finishes with a shudder, striping up the tense line of Posey's forearm.

Then there is an interval in which nothing happens. They slump against each other, weightless. Bumgarner can't even think. Every breath feels like a rag getting wrung out in his chest. His neck is slick and oversensitive where Posey did the worst damage.

Eventually Posey pries himself up, looks at Bumgarner and then down at himself, a hunched expression briefly capsizing his boyish features before he looks back up, easy smile clicking into place.

"Awright then," Posey says, clapping Bumgarner on the shoulder and quickly fixing up his uniform. He grabs the leg guard and cup off the floor, tosses the former in the bin and tucks the latter in his back pocket, smirking at Bumgarner in a way that seems vaguely foreboding.

"I'll see you up there, man," and Posey leaves just like that, like, no more to see here.

Bumgarner spends a few more minutes leaning against the wall with his hand feeling acid-burned, staring up at the pock-marked ceiling and breathing deeply. 'Struck dumb' is the phrase that seems to fit best, so he figures he'll just go with that.

*

They win the game.

Posey gives exactly no indication that he remembers their impromptu jerk-off session in the equipment room, joking and bullshitting like regular in the clubhouse, but he goes out to dinner that night with a couple of the infielders without inviting Bumgarner to come along. Not that that means anything--this is only the second road trip of the year, and he and Buster have only just recently been approaching something that resembles friendship.

But, whatever. Bumgarner tags along to a taqueria with some of the Spanish-speaking guys instead, even though they only bother to translate about a tenth of what they're saying for his benefit. It's still companionable, and anyway, Bumgarner doesn't talk much in groups as a general rule.

Back at the motel, Bumgarner watches reruns of _Wipeout_ on ABC, and tries not to think about stuff too much. It's the first thing they told him, the first day he threw a baseball and got paid for it: _quit thinking, kid._

The second thing, point of fact, was _listen to your catcher_ , which seems particularly unfortunate in the circumstances.

Bumgarner stays up past curfew, past midnight, feeling itchy and annoyed that he's not pitching for another two days. After all the late shows are done, he shoves his feet into flip-flops, goes out to the vending machines to get a 7-Up or root beer, and out in the open air, over the rail he can see down to the motel pool, where Buster Posey is floating silently on an inflatable raft, one foot trailing in the water.

Madison stands staring at him for a moment, the picture embedding itself behind his eyes, then goes down there.

Posey is wearing his warm-up shorts and nothing else, barely lit by the shimmery blue glow of the pool, the faltering overhead lights of this shitty highway motel where the Single-A teams stay when they come to town. Bumgarner lets his flip-flops scrape along the cement as he approaches, not wanting to startle him.

"Hey man," Bumgarner says, whispering for some reason.

Posey tips his head towards him, sorta smiles in a half-asleep kind of way. "Hey."

"What. Where'd you get that raft?"

"Guy in the office," and Posey is whispering too, his lips barely moving. He's floating closer to Bumgarner's side of the pool, his foot in the water steering clandestinely. Bumgarner watches him, narrow-eyed.

"Can't sleep, huh?"

"Who needs sleep?" Posey gives it a cavalier little wave.

"Well. Everybody, point of fact."

Bumgarner rocks on his heels, taking his eyes away because he doesn't want to get caught staring; approximately sixty percent of the rooms face the pool, long L-shape of the motel bracketing them. This paranoia is new and uncomfortable, and Bumgarner wants to change the scene. He glances at the heavy muscles in Posey's arms, the cut of one hip visible where his shorts are tugged down, and yeah, this is definitely exactly the same as getting turned on by a girl. Kind of astonishing, although he's not sure why he expected it to be different. He didn't expect it to _be_ , there's the trouble.

Posey has reached the edge of the pool by where Bumgarner is standing. His foot comes out of the water, dripping, and hooks on the cement lip, anchoring himself. The inflatable raft whines and wheezes around him, and the bizarre fluttering quality of the light from the pool makes Posey's eyes glitter, their deep color leeched away.

"You doing okay there, kid?" Posey says in a low drawl, running one hand across his bare stomach.

Bumgarner puts his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, his mouth dry as dust and his pulse hammering. He wants to get in the pool with Posey, pull him off the raft into the water, slide his hands down the slick and silk of Posey's skin, fingertips creeping into the back of his shorts as Posey's legs wrap around him, weightless again.

"Sure," Bumgarner says, and it sounds all right to him but Posey hears something in it, a darkish kinda smile creasing his face before he's sliding gracefully into the water and then hiking himself up the edge of the pool, rising with a sheet of wet falling off his body. Bumgarner stares at Posey's chest, his hard stomach and the way his shorts are sticking to him, leaving very little to the imagination.

"Look a little rough," Posey says still in that goddamn underground voice, and then he's reaching out and tugging on Bumgarner's shirt, and walking away.

Posey leaves a few wet footprints on the cement, and then they fade. Bumgarner follows him, distracted by the neon red gleam of the Coke machine in the vending alcove on the second level, stuck in the corner of his eye like a bloody hanging moon. Posey goes up the stairs and down the way to his room, and Bumgarner hangs back, freaked out and pretty sure he's into it but not exactly sure what that _entails_. He doesn't like going in blind.

Posey glances back at him at the door to his room, which is propped open on its lock because evidently Posey is the trusting sort. It's still mostly a smirk, that look on Posey's face. It's like Bumgarner is missing something pretty obvious.

"Well, c'mon," Posey says, sleek-wet as he disappears into the room.

Bumgarner looks back down at the pool, the inflatable raft drifting glacially from one side to the other, and then he licks his lips and follows Posey the rest of the way in.

*

On the bus, driving back to San Jose, Posey sits in the back with the rowdy guys, getting secretly drunk and louder by the mile. There's ostensibly a poker tournament going on back there, but Bumgarner's pretty sure they lost the plot on it awhile ago.

He's stationed himself in the middle, at a window seat with Darren Ford conked out next to him, headphones screwed into his ears and his mouth hanging open. Bumgarner was playing with his PSP earlier, but that got old and now he's mostly watching the scenery, and listening to the guys in the back.

"That's a fuckin' lie, how can you fuckin' lie like that," Posey says, and Runzler is firing back at him, "I told you, _told_ you," and Bumgarner wants to know what they're talking about.

He maintains position. Outside his window the Central Valley has given way to upward-running yellow hills peppered with windmill farms. Most of them are unmoving, stalled, and Bumgarner can perfectly imagine the stillness and baking heat out there, feel it sizzling on his skin.

From behind, the back of the bus, among the general chatter and argument Bumgarner catches a sound-bite of someone calling someone else a cocksucker. He doesn't recognize the voice, doesn't know who it was directed at. Bumgarner pushes his palm down the length of his thigh, grinding hard into his kneecap. He wonders if Posey flinched at all.

Because that happened last night, among other things.

Madison closes his eyes. He lets his head tip against the window, soaking up the heavy thrum of the engine.

Last night, Posey pushed him to sit on the bed and then pushed him down flat with a hand on his chest, like he didn't want Madison to see him kneeling, as if that would have changed the impact at all, the feel of Buster tugging down his sweats and shorts and curling a hand around him, the rasp of his face so low on Madison's hip, and all that was before the blowjob itself, which has rewired something in Madison's brain because he can call up the picture of it so clearly even if he'd been flat on his back gasping up at the ceiling with his eyes screwed shut at the time--it was still there in technicolor and super slo-mo, Buster's lips parting, his eyelids drifting shut.

An elbow drills into Bumgarner's side. He snaps out of his fugue, yanking his head off the window and turning to blink at Ford.

"The hell?" Bumgarner asks with a sleepy glare.

"You done playing with your game, man?" Ford says with a grin that someone has obviously been telling him is charming (his mom, no doubt; Bumgarner's heard the guy on the phone often enough).

Bumgarner takes his time about it, sighing and stretching his arms out with his fingers interwoven before getting the PSP from the backpack tucked under his seat. Ford accepts it with a happy thanks, and settles in to play the race game with the volume muted, not that that stops him from providing his own vrooming sound effects.

There's an odd discombobulated feel in Bumgarner as he attempts to get comfortable in his seat again, like he woke up on a different bus from the one he fell asleep on. His face is hot and his stomach clenched up even though he doesn't get sick on buses anymore, hasn't for years.

From the back of the bus he hears Posey saying, "And fuck you too Tommy, I needed that goddamn seven," and Bumgarner closes his eyes again, wondering if he's supposed to be sitting next to Posey back there, playing hold 'em and calling each other truthful things that no one else will take seriously. If that's the right thing--he doesn't really have a sense of it.

Bumgarner crosses his arms over his chest, slumps and considers the fact that he probably won't get this right, whatever 'right' means now. No one ever told him about this part.

*

A bunch of the guys are staying in the same apartment block near the ballpark, where the ballclub has a standing agreement with the management to rent a certain number of units dirt-cheap for the ever-rotating cast of minor league talent. There's a swimming pool too, but it's been dry for as long as Madison has been here, scarred up white along the bottom from the kids using it as a skate bowl. There are a few families crowded into units not much bigger than the ballplayers', three or four little kids in bare feet and cartoon T-shirts always running around, old ladies with pinned-back gray hair leaning on the second story railings. San Jose's low-slung skyline hunches beyond the trees.

Bumgarner gets drunk at Craig Clark's place, which is two doors down from his, and then stumbles home, lying down on his bed until the spins go away.

It's about the time of night when he gets bad ideas, just about the right kind of drunk to act on them. Bumgarner opens a hand on his stomach, slides it up to his chest and presses down. He wants something steady; he'd prefer it be someone else's hand, point of fact.

Stupid and obvious but what the hell, and Bumgarner drags his phone out, fumble-fingered searching for Posey's number and hesitating, stuttering tragically over the text message, because Bumgarner never went to college and he's not a hundred percent sure how the booty call thing is supposed to go.

 _What's up man R U around?_

Good enough, send it, go. Bumgarner watches the little screen intently, the little envelope flying away. Galloping heart, short of breath and thinking about Posey's raspy face, his soft hot mouth. Posey doesn't live in this complex, but only a few minutes away. Bumgarner has never been inside but he dropped Posey off once; he could make it there before the buzz wears off, no question about it.

He gets all caught up in the possibilities of it. Nineteen years old and all, Bumgarner is still figuring out the specifics beyond that sex is fucking awesome. He hasn't tried everything yet, doesn't know what he likes best, doesn't even know if this gay thing is gonna be all the time or if it's just Buster or just the situation or what. Bumgarner wonders feverishly about what Posey might let him do, if maybe he could try his hand at the cocksucking thing because Posey certainly seemed pretty into it, eyes closed blissfully and sorta moaning around Bumgarner's dick as he pressed his chest flush to Madison's legs and clutched his hips, how he was already hard as fuck when Bumgarner pulled him up and started jerking him off, already slick and shivering and choking with every gasp, every stroke.

Bumgarner comes back to himself after an extended interval of filthy-minded reverie. He blinks at the same off-white ceiling and picks his phone off his chest to make sure he hasn't missed a call or dozed off or anything, but the screen is blank. Seventeen minutes since he texted Posey, and is there a window for this type of thing, are you supposed to move on to someone else if you don't get a response after a certain amount of time?

Bumgarner doesn't know. He doesn't have anyone else to hit up, anyway, and possibly he's not cut out for the booty call thing as a general rule, and he gives up on it, feeling kinda awkward and ignorant.

It takes him almost five minutes to work up the motivation to rise and brush his teeth, and then he almost passes out in the bathroom, ends up face-planting on the bed with his jeans still on and his cap jammed under his body. When he wakes up it feels like he's been unconscious for approximately two hundred years.

*

They're at the ballpark at nine o'clock in the morning on the off-day, stretching in the sideways-slanted light, long shadows of the light standards cutting across the outfield.

Bumgarner is intently occupied before he's all the way awake, stuck with the other pitchers learning how to throw a major league slider. Everybody gets tunnel vision, not noticing when a stray hawk of tobacco spatters against spikes, leaning heavily on each other's shoulders. Bumgarner apes the grip, digging his fingertips into the stitches like he wants to get it branded. He's already contemptuous of that weak rubbery thing they taught him back at South Caldwell High School, sneering at his yesterday self, you call that a _slider_.

Posey and the catchers are working on blocking pitches in the dirt. One of the coaches is having a sadistically good time overthrowing splitters to them. They crash to their knees over and over, arms straight down, chest made into a wall, keep it in front, knock it down. Trent Kline takes a bad skidding hop directly into the balls, and almost throws up in the dirt, on his hands and knees in all his gear. They haul him over to the dugout and lay him out on the bench, and one of the bat boys, who hang around whether they're getting paid or not, commences fanning Kline's agony-wrenched face with a scorebook.

It's tough work, and everyone is panting and red by the time they take their first break. Guys sprawl on the grass, slump against the fence, sucking on water bottles and eating orange slices like they haven't seen food in a week.

Bumgarner takes a couple of wedges and screws up his courage, goes over to where Posey is lying flat on his back with his legs still guarded and hanging over the dugout steps. Bumgarner's shadow slants across Posey's face, makes him squint his eyes open.

"Orange?" Bumgarner offers.

Posey's hand comes up and grabs a wedge, fingers dirty and his knuckles scratched up. Taking that as an implicit invitation, Bumgarner hunkers down and sits on the steps, pulls off his cap to scrape a hand through his hair, already thick with sweat.

"It's fuckin' hot, huh," Bumgarner says.

Posey kinda moves his shoulders like a shrug, eyes squinted so tight against the sun they might as well be closed. He tucks the whole wedge into his mouth to make his grin brilliant orange and inscrutable.

It isn't much of a conversation topic, anyway, the weather. Surely they're not so far gone as to be stuck at _that_. Not to mention, Northern California's version of 'hot' doesn't have much on North Carolina or Georgia in the mosquito-thick heart of summer. Bumgarner eats his own orange slice, wanting time to think of more clever things.

The element of distraction presented by Buster Posey laid out in the sun at the edge of a baseball field is somewhat more intense than Bumgarner is really prepared to deal with. The short sleeve of Posey's jersey is twisted up on one side so Bumgarner can see the greening bruise on his biceps, comet-shaped with half of it defined by a clear curve and the other blurred as if by interstellar velocity. That bruise is Bumgarner's doing, point of fact. A fastball he hung up on the wrong side of the plate, and Buster swearing and shaking off his glove, dead-armed. That was three days ago, and Posey came out to the mound to give himself a little time to recover, scowling at Bumgarner with fantastic color in his face and one hand clapped, rubbing hard at his shoulder, saying, "You're buying me about three fuckin' beers tonight, man, that fuckin' _hurt_."

"Oh hey," Bumgarner says, like it just occurred to him. "Didja get my text last night?"

And then there is excruciating silence, which is the trouble with questions like that: always at least a few seconds of pure torture, no matter how it turns out in the end.

Posey lifts his arm, lets a bar of light fall across his face so he can give Bumgarner a proper look. He takes the desiccated orange peel out of his mouth with a wet slurp, lips curling up in a smirk that makes something go withering and small in Bumgarner's gut.

"Yep," Posey says.

Bumgarner waits, but gets nothing else. "Uh. Yeah. I was, ah. Seeing if you wanted to hang out or whatever."

He's careful about it and all, keeps his voice way down even though there's no one within ten feet of them and the two closest are engaged in a spirited discussion in Spanish, but Posey's eyes still thin down, nostrils flaring a little bit.

"Thanks, I think I deciphered your little code there," and fuck, this is going to go badly. Posey's smirk looks chipped onto his mouth. "Guess you need some help on your end, so here: no answer means no."

"Right," Bumgarner says, bobbing his head like an idiot. "Sure. That. That's what I figured."

Posey snorts, plainly doesn't believe him, and puts his arm down on his face, no longer interested in looking at Bumgarner or being looked at by him. "Don't be stupid, Madison."

"Okay," Bumgarner replies automatically, face hot-red with the domino-fall feeling in his chest, dozens of tiny plastic collapses, and he's aware a split second later that he should have asked _how_.

*

Never let it be said that Madison Bumgarner can't take a hint.

He backs off, retreats into the encompassing fold of baseball all around him. There's still an awful lot of novelty in getting paid to go to the ballpark. He's still got to work out that split-fingered fastball.

They play Visalia and Stockton at home, where for the first half of the game the barbecue tent scents the air from beyond the bleachers along the left field line, smokey sweet and all the guys in the dugout gnawing on beef jerky, starving. There are minor league shenanigans happening at every inning break, kids in oversized T-shirts recruited from the crowd for musical chairs and dizzy-bat races, chasing the foam-headed Giants mascot around the bases. One night Bumgarner draws the short straw and has to go out and throw at one of the headlights of a rigged truck, trying to smash it out before Joe Martinez can bust his own.

He pitches pretty well in his start on the home-stand, although it's slightly weird throwing to Posey now, reminded at the most unfortunate moments that he's had his dick in that guy's mouth. When Buster comes out for mound conferences, Bumgarner mostly glares over his shoulder at the batter and nods along, trying not to lean in too much. Posey doesn't seem to notice anything, smacks Bumgarner on the ass before he goes back behind the plate, all normal here.

Lots of extraneous stuff, but Bumgarner would prefer to just focus on pitching, at least for the length of time he's at the ballpark, which is most of his life, which is how he wants it.

Back home, for whatever value of 'home' the nondescript already-furnished apartment can satisfy, Bumgarner wakes up a few times from dreams about his teeth falling out and pitching naked, and then, late in the week, he dreams of Posey crowding him against the dugout wall before bending him over the bench, dry wood under Bumgarner's mouth and Posey hot as hell on his back, both of them bare-chested and he can feel the sparse hair on Posey's chest rasping, Posey's rattly huff of breath and teeth sinking into the back of Bumgarner's shoulder, and then Bumgarner jolts awake like he just fell off a fucking cliff.

That night, no more than five minutes later, Bumgarner has jerked himself off to thoughts of another guy for the first time ever, and it's pretty goddamn good. He catches his breath, rubbing his slick hand on his belly, feeling diffuse and floaty with astonishment.

He spends the next three nights up way too late on the internet. conducting research.

Turns out, he's a little gay. Maybe about twenty percent; the numbers are indistinct just now.

The evidence is irrefutable. Broad-shouldered guys do it for him, legs heavy with muscle and dark with hair, and also baby-faced college boys who stay hard by watching the straight porn in the rented room where the gay porn is being filmed, those guys who never smile.

Bumgarner takes his second shower of the day, dizzy and endorphin-high and kinda confused still.

He figures that he's just never had a reason to consider guys, not when girls do it for him too and obviously there was no point in him wanting to fuck anybody other than girls when he was back in North Carolina, high school baseball star and small-town hero and all. It still seems like he should have _known_ , if only for himself, and Bumgarner wonders, detached and scrubbing his junk, if he's been in total denial his whole life.

But that's seems unlikely too, and not just because it makes him look kinda dumb. Bumgarner has just never had to think about gay stuff much before. He doesn't know any gay people. Maybe he still doesn't, because he's only twenty percent and Posey might even be less than that; he didn't want to do it more than twice, after all.

The fact that it happened twice is what trips Bumgarner up every time. That first time in the equipment shed, breathless and unhinged and devoid of all sense, it was quick enough and bizarre enough that they could have played it off later, adrenaline or whatever, that beautiful home run that Posey had sent into the night, all this brain-destroying baseball stuff, but the second time, the _second_.

Posey didn't have to take Bumgarner up to his room, that second night. Didn't have to touch him or suck him off or say anything at all; he could have pretended to be asleep on that raft and Bumgarner would have slunk away after a minute or two, not wanting to make it a big thing. Posey didn't have to do _anything_.

It's the difference between premeditated and just regular murder, about twenty extra years in prison. It's the crucial point, Bumgarner's sure. Whatever Posey's reasons for not wanting to do it again, they definitely stem from that second time.

At the ballpark, after a game Bumgarner is heading into the showers when he catches a glimpse of the bare stretch of Posey under the spray, his sleek shifting back and perfect ass and strong legs, tipping his face back with his hands running over his head, down the nape of his neck.

Bumgarner has to spin away, his ears on fire and one hand clutching the towel around his waist, biting down hard on the inside of his lip and praying that no one will see as he ducks into the bathroom, sliding on the tiled floor and stumbling into a stall, breathing out in hoarse relief as the door claps shut behind him and his hand comes into fumbling contact with his cock.

Bumgarner has watched more gay porn in the past few days than he ever expected to in his life, but still, nothing has gotten him off faster or harder than the very simple picture of Posey, naked and wet and seen from behind.

*

Their next trip is down to the Southland to play the Inland Empire 66ers out of San Bernadino, and the High Desert Mavericks of scenic Adelanto, California. Six hours on the bus and Bumgarner pretends to be asleep for most of it, not really interested in dealing with his teammates just now.

Posey is just a couple rows behind him, and Bumgarner hears snatches of the long cell phone conversation he's having, hears Posey describing the scenery to someone, "Yep, more cows," and laughing sometimes. The casual affection in Posey's voice makes Bumgarner think he must be talking to someone in his family, his mom or a sibling maybe. Bumgarner realizes that he doesn't even know if Posey has brothers or sisters, which bothers him a lot for some reason.

They get in with time enough to grab a late dinner and a beer, and Bumgarner inserts himself in the cab of the guys who seem to know where they're going. It's a roadhouse-looking place, playing up the cowboy angle with a neon blue boot kicking above the sign. They've come in a crowd of fifteen, and are granted one whole side of the big empty barn-type building, the dancefloor scuffed and untraveled.

Bumgarner orders a cheeseburger because that's hard to screw up, and PBR is going for two bucks a can, so it sounds like he's getting drunk tonight. The rest of the guys are in agreement, and their tabletops become thickly forested with silver-blue empties.

Regular out-with-the-boys kind of night, and Bumgarner has designs on Villalona's onion rings, edging close with his elbows on the table, when Posey slides into the booth beside him.

Bumgarner freezes, only for a second but Posey probably notices. He glances at his catcher, lets one hand curl protectively around the edge of the table.

"Hiya Buster."

"Hello." Posey flashes his fake autograph-signing smile. "How's it going, kid?"

"Good. Uh. How's it going with you?"

"Pretty fuckin' good, although listen, I wanted to show you this one thing."

"Oh yeah?" Bumgarner says, taking a steadying drink of his beer because he doesn't know what Posey's doing, if this is some kind of secret lingo.

"Yeah c'mon it's really cool," and Posey puts his hand on Bumgarner's leg under the table, a warm shock of pressure that has Bumgarner jumping, dropping his fork on the plate. Posey squeezes his thigh, hard enough that he can feel each one of his fingers, and then he's standing out of the booth, swaying and catching himself, dazzling grin on his face that means nothing but Bumgarner likes it anyway. He gets up and follows Posey, high-pitched buzz in his ears, trying not to trip over anybody.

Posey goes back to the bathrooms and Bumgarner's pulse kicks up because the two of them would hardly fit in a stall together and half the goddamn team would be right outside, but Posey has a better idea, pushing out the back exit and onto the gravel parking lot.

It's near midnight but still itchy-hot, Bumgarner's shirt sticking to the small of his back. Posey winds between the parked cars, footsteps crunching, not looking back at Bumgarner but that's all right; Bumgarner has a feeling it's a pretty idiotic look that he's wearing right now.

Way at the back of the lot, in the shadow of a few stunted palm trees and shielded from the bar by a white van stenciled with an exterminator's logo, a cartoon rat dressed up as an angel with a harp and all, and Posey pushes Bumgarner up against the side of it, dim flash of his teeth as he bites off a smile.

Bumgarner smiles wildly back at him, so eager he's shaking, and so goddamned confused his head might cave in.

"So, so we _are_ gonna," Bumgarner says, and makes a move to grab Posey's belt, gets swatted away for his trouble.

"Yep," Posey answers, and kicks Bumgarner's feet apart, slides one of his legs between and presses up against him from shoulder to knee.

" _Jesus_." Bumgarner wasn't expecting that. Posey is insanely warm and broad, his firm thigh between Bumgarner's and pushing in, rubbing so nice that all his blood rushes to his dick and he almost swoons. Bumgarner's head bangs back against the van, hollow thunking sound, and he keeps talking because otherwise he's going to lose it in his fuckin' pants.

"'cause I, I thought we weren't gonna, thought you didn't want to."

"Dumb," Posey mutters, ducking his head to lick at Bumgarner's throat, wet lash of his tongue. "Good thing you're a pitcher, man, fuckin' knucklehead."

"Hey," and Bumgarner means to protest that more because he's no dumber than any other nineteen year old kid playing professional baseball for the first time, but then Posey is tipping away and going to work on their belts and Bumgarner swallows the rest of it, because he's got his priorities straight.

Posey keeps him shoved up against the side of the van, gets both their flies open, his coarse palm making Bumgarner shiver and twist into him. Posey strokes them both together, breathing out urgently against Bumgarner's throat, sucking and biting just shy of too much, just enough to make Madison's hips jerk and mind fuzz whitely away. Buster shifts against him and the gravel crunches, and far away a car alarm is going off.

He finishes quickly again, quick enough to be embarrassing if Posey wasn't right behind him, moaning low into his shoulder with his free hand fisted in Bumgarner's shirt, pulling it up so that Posey can shoot all over his stomach, and then Bumgarner is a wreck, weak-kneed and panting with his back to the dead-and-gone cartoon rat, blown apart.

Posey leans one hand on the van, his head down for a moment, and when he looks back up his neat meaningless smile is back in place, his blue eyes not bright enough to really make out in this light.

Bumgarner stares, and thinks about kissing him, thinks that they should try that too because everything else has worked out pretty well.

Instead he says again, "I thought we weren't gonna."

An impatient edge slips across Posey's expression, that _goddamn rookie_ look that Bumgarner gets more often than really seems warranted.

"Not when we're at home," Posey says like it should be obvious. "It's a road thing, it's not, like, real. Just fucking around, you know?"

"Yeah," Bumgarner says, because you say yeah, you nod along. His hands twitch at his sides, and he should stop looking at Posey's mouth. "That's cool."

"Yeah, so try to _be_ cool, huh? I know it's hard for you," and Buster fixes his belt, wipes his hands on the van before finishing the job on his jeans. He reassembles, pieces fit right back into place, and Madison pushes his fingers at the sore place on his neck, wanting a bruise to form there and wishing he'd left some evidence of his own.

*

It's a road thing, makes so much more sense now.

Or, well. Parts of it make more sense, obvious parts like why Posey stayed away from him in San Jose, and why Posey keeps calling him stupid, because apparently other guys get a freakin' manual in this stuff; maybe it's another college thing that he missed out on.

Other things remain shrouded in mystery. Bumgarner isn't sure why they can jerk each other off and Posey can leave a hickey on his neck and theoretically blowjobs are still on the table, but if he tries to kiss Buster he's pretty sure he'll come out of it with a black eye. He doesn't know if Posey actually likes him, or if it's only a convenience thing. He isn't sure how gay any of this makes either of them.

In a motel room in San Bernadino, after Bumgarner takes a killer loss on seven innings of one-run ball, Posey brings his laptop over and they watch porn with their hands in each other's jeans, which works out perfectly because Bumgarner is left-handed, and it's the easiest sex he's ever had. Towards the end, when Posey's head tips back and his eyes go slitted and he makes that choked moaning sound that Bumgarner is starting to recognize, starting to look forward to, towards the end there, Posey shifts and hooks his leg over Bumgarner's to get closer, heavy weight pinning him down as Posey's bare foot bumps against Bumgarner's socked one, and Bumgarner flexes, presses into it with their toes nudging together, and for some ridiculous reason the fact that he's playing footsie with Buster at the end of the bed seems exactly as relevant as the fact that they've got their hands on each other's cocks.

Afterwards, Posey comes out of the bathroom with his hands still wet from the sink, patting dry on his T-shirt and swiping through his hair so that it spikes up in front a little bit.

"Movie's not bad, huh?" Posey says.

Bumgarner blinks at him for a second, lost until he registers the porn still running on the laptop, tinny groans and curses, badly pixelated swaths of pink skin moving obscurely. Bumgarner wasn't exactly watching the movie, but he answers, "Yeah, 's all right."

Posey comes to sit on the edge of the bed, turning the laptop a bit away from Bumgarner. Bumgarner looks at the close line of Posey's neck, the place where his hairline shaves into skin, kinda flushed now on account of the recent orgasm and all, and Bumgarner considers leaning forward and licking that spot but it seems fraught with peril and things are going pretty well, so he holds himself back.

The porn has girls in it, sometimes nothing but girls, and Bumgarner has no idea why he's vaguely surprised about that, but there you go.

"Damn, baby," Posey says low, making Bumgarner jolt, but Posey's talking to the computer, his blue eyes darkly intent on the screen.

Uncertainty itches in Bumgarner, that hateful sense that he's only understanding about half of what's going on. He doesn't know Posey's tastes in pornography, doesn't know what his favorite movie or band is, doesn't know how many places he lived when he was a kid or what his family looks like or if everybody he loves is still alive. It's a different kind of thing, being teammates first. Madison knows the kind of oil Posey prefers for his mitt, the dimensions of his bats, the sound Posey's knees make popping when he comes out of the crouch late in games. He knows that Buster likes Dr. Pepper and hot sauce on everything and candy bars with almonds. Bumgarner knows how he likes to jerk off, because Posey just showed him.

Bumgarner could catalogue this stuff all day, what he knows and what he doesn't. He's just got no idea what it's supposed to mean.

Wanting a new topic, Bumgarner says, "You wanna stick around and watch a real movie? I got that, uh, the new Batman."

Posey glances at him, and shakes his head. "Nah, I'd fall asleep halfway through."

"That's okay," Bumgarner says, picturing it really clearly, Posey sprawled out in this bed, lit by computer light.

"Some other time maybe," and Posey turns off the porn, shuts his laptop and stands up, tossing a smile in Bumgarner's direction. "See ya tomorrow, man."

"Yeah, see ya."

That's it, and then Posey is gone and Bumgarner is wondering how he might have played that differently, if there was something he could have said that would have resulted in Posey sticking around, staying over.

Probably not. It's probably another weird rule, like the kissing thing, can't fall asleep anywhere but your own bed. Keeps it from getting complicated.

Bumgarner strips down to his shorts and brushes his teeth, shaves because his scruff has been getting long enough to itch. He looks at a car magazine until his eyelids start to droop, and then tries to fall asleep.

An hour later he's still awake, wrapped up trying to remember the words of that country song Posey was singing along with in the restaurant earlier, something about Corvettes and a shotgun and someone's carelessly broken heart, something Buster liked well enough at some point to learn all the way through.

*

They go through Adelanto, and Bumgarner gives his very first blowjob in a motel room with a rattlesnake painting on the wall, which is the random detail that sticks in his mind and the trigger to this moment for the rest of his life. Brown rattlesnake coiled with a long curve of diamonds on its back, blue sand and purple sky, cheap plastic frame rattling against the wall when Posey bangs his head back.

Bumgarner is profoundly affected by the blunt press of Posey's cock over his tongue, the unthinking scratch of fingers through his hair, nails painful over his ears, the cut of muscle in Posey's hip where Bumgarner braces his hand. Bumgarner loves it, stunned to realize how much, stunned to find himself already hard when Posey comes in his mouth before dropping to his knees and jamming his hand into Bumgarner's sweatpants, three or four good tight wet strokes and game over, Buster wins on a walk-off.

They both end up sprawled on the floor, sandpaper carpet rough on the places where Madison's clothes are pulled askew. He listens to Posey's breathing settle, feels his own pulse stagger and catch and taper off to a more reasonable pace.

The rattlesnake painting is hanging crookedly now. Bumgarner's hands are shaking, and so he's keeping them pressed flat to the floor. He feels cracked open, split down seams he didn't even know he had.

"Not bad," Posey says.

"Oh. Yeah?"

"Yeah, I'd say you're about on par with a really drunk sorority girl." Posey pauses. "It's a compliment, you know."

"Okay. Thank you." The muscles in Bumgarner's legs have gone fluttery, a similar winged feeling happening in his chest, and he's dazed, flushed with draining pleasure that seeps away from his skin like lost heat.

"So polite. Nobody'd ever guess what you were just doing with that mouth."

Bumgarner's stomach flips. "Um," and he doesn't know what comes next, just kinda trails off.

"Little bit of practice," Posey says, kinda drifting tone, like he's just talking without thinking much about it. "That's all you need. Just a little experience. I could keep you on your knees for about a day, I swear."

Madison feels pinned to the floor, heat rolling through him and his dick doing all it can to make a second go of it because yeah, yeah, he can get behind that plan.

"You know a lot about it, huh?" Bumgarner says in a roughed-up voice.

"More'n you."

"Ob-obviously. That's why--I mean. You've done this before, right?"

Three seconds pass, maybe four, some small number that feels larger from where Bumgarner lies prone on the floor. He's sure in a bedrock way that that question is way out of bounds, and Posey's gonna slap him down, pick himself up and slam the door when he leaves, not come to find Bumgarner ever again, never touch him or let him go to his knees, nothing, the bad ending coming down just that quickly.

Stupid, _stupid_ , and Bumgarner fights off a rising tide of mortification as the silence stretches, keeping his hands still at his sides. When he was a little kid he got teased and called Dumbo, which had more to do with his ears than his intelligence level, but it's the kind of thing that sticks with a person. Madison still can't stand this feeling, all this goddamn ignorance.

"A time or two," is what Buster says eventually, neutral.

Bumgarner swallows hard, staring up the vertical angle of the wall with its cactus wallpaper, the rattlesnake painting clinging to its nail so fragilely that an eighteen-wheeler trundling by outside might shake it loose.

"Like. In college?" Bumgarner asks.

"Yeah."

Nothing more from Posey, and he probably doesn't want to talk about it, probably pissed off that Bumgarner is pressing him and made just tolerant enough by the near memory of Bumgarner's mouth on him, but god knows that won't last. Bumgarner turns his pitching hand over on the carpet, rasping his knuckles and it feels like steel wool. He figures, already out on this fucking limb, and says:

"Guess this shit probably happens all the time, but, but fuck if I ever knew about it. Nobody. Nobody ever told me."

"What, you need a manual for how to get your dick sucked?"

"No. No." Bumgarner scrambles for a better way to describe it, glad that he can't see Posey right now and Posey can't see him, unless Posey's looking, but why would he be? "Just. I didn't know I was supposed to be looking at. Guys. You."

He bites his tongue as soon as the last word escapes. His ears prickle with heat as his stomach sinks, because that wasn't what he meant to say, or maybe it was and it's just more poor decision-making on his part.

Sharp movement in his peripheral vision, Posey sitting up. Bumgarner tips his head, risking a glance at him with his heart in his throat, and finds Posey looking down with a stiff-edged smirk twisting his mouth in a way that might have stung Bumgarner if he weren't so fatally distracted by the deep river color of Posey's eyes at this angle, this particular quality of light.

"You gotta take it where you can get it," Posey tells him, and reaches out towards Bumgarner's face, whose pulse abruptly jumps the rails, eyes going wide thinking that Posey might touch him carefully, fingertips tracing his lips, might lean down and kiss him slow like how people are supposed to kiss, like when it means something.

Posey flicks his ear instead. Bumgarner hisses and recoils, something shrinking inside as Posey grins, very blue eyes gone cold.

"You especially can't be picky," Posey says as he rolls to his knees and then up to his feet. "Fuckin' stringbean, I keep thinking I'm gonna snap you in half."

Bumgarner blinks, flat on the floor with Posey about ten feet tall over him, vertigo unmooring him even though Bumgarner hasn't moved.

"Don't. Don't worry about that."

"Don't tell me what to do," Posey shoots back, and that doesn't mean anything at all, it's just Posey's default punk response to direct orders, even the ones he follows without hesitation. Bumgarner tries out a wavery little chuckle, and he can't tell from this lousy perspective if Posey's response is a smile or a smirk or a sneer or something wholly different.

"You planning to sleep down there?" Posey asks.

"Um, no. That would be kinda weird."

After a moment of watching Bumgarner not move, Posey sighs, aggrieved, and sticks his hand out. "C'mon, c'mon."

Bumgarner grabs Posey's wrist, gets his feet under him and gets hauled up. He totters, too fast too much too soon, and Posey pushes him so that he falls harmlessly onto the bed, face mashing into the polyester comforter. It smells like industrial soap and really old cigarettes, and Bumgarner rolls onto his back, the world rolling with him. Posey stands alongside the bed, arms crossed over his chest, and yeah, still a smirk, loveless and cool as fucking ice.

"Thanks," Madison says. His throat is tight.

"Gotta take care of my pitchers, don't I?"

"Yeah. Good." Bumgarner closes his eyes, a low-pitched achey feeling in his gut that he's trying not to think too much about. "Night, Buster."

"Night, Mad," Posey says, and because Bumgarner is holding his breath and counting mississippis in his head, he knows that it's fourteen seconds before Posey actually moves to leave the room, fourteen quiet seconds just standing there looking at Bumgarner and Jesus H. Christ, what does _that_ mean?

*

A couple days later they go back north, back home.

Bumgarner sits in the middle of the bus with Villalona and Zambrano and Torres, who are playing dirty hangman on the back of a pitcher report. Bumgarner learns the Spanish words for motherfucker and whoreson and dogfucker, thinking that that will probably come in handy.

There's so much less pressure on him when the conversation is in a different language. Bumgarner keeps score for the game, doodles ever-elaborate gallows for them to use. He's not listening for Posey at the back of the bus, having learned his lesson.

It's late when they roll into San Jose, gray cloud night sky, no stars or moon. In the parking lot of the ballpark where they all left their cars, Bumgarner can hear Posey talking with Martinez and Ford, saying how it's Wednesday and margaritas are three bucks at the Well.

Bumgarner closes his hand up around his car keys, metal teeth cutting into his palm. He wants to invite himself along to the bar, raise his voice a little over the cars to say _hey I wanna come_ , and it would be a normal thing, a thing that happened all the time, because there will be beer and girls there and a guy doesn't have to need any other reason, right?

But he doesn't say anything, doesn't go with them. It hasn't even been twenty-four hours since he last had his hand on Posey's dick. They're not exactly friends anymore, if they ever were. This thing seems to require a different definition.

The first game of the home-stand is undertaken in bad twilight conditions with the dense sky looking hitched to the light standards, and in the sixth, two of their outfielders run into each other full-scale while going after a fly ball. Thomas Neal is knocked out cold for almost a minute, freaking everybody right the hell out, and then it's like the rest of the game is an afterthought, an irritating chore to be completed as quickly as possible.

After they lose, Bumgarner goes over to the hospital where they're keeping Neal and his mild concussion overnight for observation. It's way past visiting hours, which Bumgarner didn't even think about, but evidently the ballclub has a few strings to pull here, because Bumgarner doesn't have to do more than show up with a Giants cap folded in his back pocket to get waved through to Neal's private room.

Posey is already there, slouched in a institutional pale green chair by Neal's bed fiddling with his phone, and Bumgarner is immediately derailed, whatever he'd intended to say dying on his lips as he blinks at Posey, and Posey's legs, spread casually open.

"Hey Maddy," Neal says, and Bumgarner jerks his gaze over, noticing abruptly that Darren Ford is in the room too, eating a cup of red Jello with a beige plastic spork that he waves at Bumgarner in greeting.

"Hey Tom." Bumgarner hooks his foot around the leg of another one of those cheap scratched-up hospital chairs, pulls it up alongside Ford. "You feelin' okay?"

"Yeah top-notch."

Neal doesn't looks too banged up, just kinda baggy under his eyes and his hair all limp. Ford is the one who collided with him in the outfield and he shows it more, one cheekbone swollen and starting to darken and he'll be lucky if he can still see out that eye in the morning. Ford seems to be taking it pretty well, feet propped up on the side of the bed, happy with his Jello.

Bumgarner glances at Posey, who seems intent on having a text message conversation instead of an actual one, rude motherfucker. "Uh. Did they. They say if you're gonna be good to play tomorrow?"

"Like they'd bother telling me that shit," Neal says. "I want to go, I totally could. Just a headache, I can play through a stupid headache."

"Yeah," Bumgarner says, mostly believing him.

"Did you hear it in the dugout?" Ford asks. "Andres came by earlier, he said he could hear it when we hit, like, _ker-aaack_."

Ford bashes his fists together, exploding out his fingers like a car crash, a bomb blowing up.

"Uh, yeah, I guess I did," Bumgarner says, although he doesn't remember the sound so much as the sight, Ford and Neal streaking towards each other blindly with their faces turned upwards, and how everyone in the ballpark could see what was about to happen and how there was no way to stop it, and then the impact, and Neal dropping like a sack of flour, just suddenly boneless and unmoving on the grass while Ford groaned and rolled next to him, clutching at his face.

"It was gnarly, huh?" Ford says, having altogether too much fun with this.

"Scary," Bumgarner says, and then kinda flinches.

Ford and Neal nod along, and Posey is smirking fondly down at his phone, his thumbs tapping away.

"Yeah, lucky this kid's head is so hard," Ford says with a feint towards Neal that gets batted down easily.

"Lucky you were already ugly, that shiner's not gonna mess up your face too bad," Neal fires back, and then it's banter and insult for awhile, and Posey actually rouses himself to join in at some point, talking shit like a first language, all on the surface.

Eventually it tapers off. It's even later now, and there's a day game tomorrow. Once Ford starts yawning, Neal sends them off with Posey promising to hit a home run tomorrow for his poor sick buddy in the hospital, and Neal of course makes him pledge to two home runs instead.

It's not awkward until the three of them hit the parking lot, and Ford says, "Hey Buster, why don't you catch a ride with him, it's more on the way," and Posey says, "Whatever," and Bumgarner doesn't understand what happened until Ford says a cheery goodnight and splits off towards his car, and Posey's still following Bumgarner.

"I'm taking you home?" Bumgarner asks, and then wants to rip out his tongue because in addition to the appallingly obvious content, his voice actually _cracked_ right there, and he shouldn't be allowed to speak anymore, clearly. He is very careful not to look at Posey, cutting between two close-parked cars so that they have to go single file.

"Seems to be the situation," Posey says.

"Right." Just a convenience thing, Bumgarner tells himself. Just because Posey lives less than a mile from Bumgarner and Ford is all the way out on Steven's Creek Boulevard, so it just makes good sense.

Inside Bumgarner's car, en route, conversation is hard to come by. Bumgarner scans restlessly through the country music radio stations he has programmed, not looking for anything specific but not liking anything he finds. Eventually Posey smacks his hand away from the dial.

"Leave it. Twitchy fucker."

Bumgarner snatches his hand back, curls it up on his leg. In the corner of his eye, Posey is sprawled like a magazine photo in the shotgun seat, his legs open again, broad shoulders turned against the door.

"Sorry," Bumgarner says belatedly, and Posey doesn't answer.

They don't talk for the of the ride, not that it's such a long time. Bumgarner is hyper-aware of Posey, eyes fixed on the road but every other sense reaching out for him, nose and ears and skin and tongue, wanting him in all ways.

It's a minor miracle that he makes it to Buster's place without killing them in a fiery wreck. Bumgarner pulls up to the curb outside Posey's apartment block, under the densely woven shadows of the trees lining the sidewalk. Bumgarner squeezes the gear shift under his hand but doesn't put it into park, keeping his foot on the brake because he assumes Posey's just gonna say goodnight and go inside, or maybe not even the first part.

But instead Posey stays slouched half against the car door, his hands loose and open, watching Bumgarner as if waiting for something.

Bumgarner licks his lips. "Um, goodnight?" and sweet merciful Christ, he didn't mean for that to come out like a question.

The corner of Posey's lip curls up, general mocking kind of thing that Bumgarner figures he probably asked for.

"You're a weird kid, Madison," Posey says.

Bumgarner blinks. "Uh. _What?_ ," because that's honestly the last thing he expected to hear. " _I'm_ weird?"

"'s what I said."

"But. I. You." Bumgarner cuts himself off, stymied. He presses his foot down harder on the brake, feeling his whole leg become taut with strain. Struck dumb, that bad feeling again, because there's so much wrong with that Bumgarner doesn't even know where to start. _He's_ never done anything. He's just been here. Just been reacting.

"You think about shit too much," Posey tells him. "It's not good for you."

"I don't," Bumgarner says, and that's a lie, he can tell from Posey's face. He swallows, tries again. "Maybe I do. But if you would--would _tell_ me. Explain just a little bit, just, just help me out here."

"Nah," Posey says without even _thinking_ about it, the bastard. "It's actually kinda fun to watch."

And Bumgarner would protest that, maybe take the swing at him that Posey so richly deserves, but Posey is as deft in the use of distraction as any black-hatted magician, and he's sliding as close as he can get to Bumgarner with the console between them, and putting his hand on Bumgarner's thigh, and skimming up with his fingertips dragging along the inner seam. Bumgarner jumps, his foot coming off the brake for a second and the car jolts forward, almost throws Posey into the dash but he's laughing, squirming around and brushing the horn with his elbow, weak little bleat that matches whatever these noises are coming out of Bumgarner as Posey reaches to yank the e-brake up and jam the car into park, and then his hands are back on Bumgarner's legs and Bumgarner mutters "holy fuck" a bunch of times, staring down in astonishment at Posey going swiftly to work on his belt and fly, Posey grinning through his eyelashes and pulling his lower lip in between his teeth, getting his mouth all ready and Bumgarner has to close his eyes then, tip his head back on the seat, think fervently and desperately about baseball instead.

Posey sucks him off and then while Madison's still shaking, Posey takes his head between his hands and drags him down, folding him awkwardly because Bumgarner's really too tall to do this with any grace in the front seat of a car, but Posey has his fingers covering Bumgarner's ears and his hips jerking, his stomach trembling, and Bumgarner finds the discomfort is entirely bearable for these kinds of rewards.

And then after that's done, Posey pulls Bumgarner up by the shoulders, pushes him away with a happy sigh, a quicksilver grin as he says, "Getting better at that, kid," before opening the door and getting out as if blowjobs are acceptable as a substitute for goodbye.

Posey slams the door shut behind him just as Bumgarner says, "But."

He stares after Posey, through the faintly fogged window, the blurry retreat. Posey goes up the outside steps and disappears onto the second level, because this is where Posey lives, this is his home, but that doesn't make any sense because Posey told him, it was only a few days ago, just a road thing, not when we're at home, he'd _said_ that, those are the only instructions Bumgarner was ever given and _what the fuck_.

Bumgarner starts the car again, drives home in a daze that is half post-orgasmic and half complete bewilderment. He takes a sleeping pill because he knows immediately that he'll need it, and he has that dream again, naked on the mound and it looks like Yankee Stadium except ten times as many people, every face turned down on him as he cringes bare-assed and cold with only his glove for modesty, and Buster on his knees behind the plate, shouting, "Pitch, Madison, pitch."

*

At the ballpark, Posey is all business.

Madison takes the hill against the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, whose cap insignia is a stylized Q with tremor lines around it, and can't do shit with his slider except throw it in the dirt.

He wants to get it, he knows he can, feeling it scratching and clawing under the skin of his fingertips, and Bumgarner shakes off Posey three times until he calls for the slider again. Bumgarner digs into the stitches of the ball, thinking, _this one, this one_.

He hangs it up, fat and beautiful right down the pipe. The batter hits the ball over the fence on one hop, the right fielder holding up his arms immediately. Bumgarner curses viciously, stalks around the back of the mound to pick up the rosin and chuck it down hard. When he turns back, Posey has come out for a little chat.

Bumgarner attempts to glare him down, not in the mood for platitudes.

Neither is Buster, turns out. He stomps up to Bumgarner, almost onto his toes, says through a snarl, "You gonna fuckin' throw what I call now?"

"Just hung up a bit, I can get it-"

"No, fuck that, you don't have the slider today."

"I can _get_ it, I know I can," and Bumgarner is trying to match Posey, heat to heat, eye to eye.

"You don't. Fucking. Have it," Posey grates out like a death threat. "Fastballs, you throw fucking _fastballs_ when your breaking stuff isn't there, is this your first time playing this goddamn game?"

Posey jams the fresh ball into Bumgarner's glove, and then squeezes the thick bones of his wrist tightly, like a warning.

"You better not shake me off again, fucker," Posey says, and Madison sneers, turns his head to the side to spit on the dirt.

That's mostly for show. He doesn't shake off any more of Posey's signs, lives on fastballs on the black at the knees, the occasionally change-up thrown in like a gift rigged to backfire. No more sliders, and the itch dies out in Bumgarner's left hand, and they actually end up winning the game.

Feeling irritatingly humbled, Bumgarner takes the seat next to Posey on the couch in the clubhouse, both of them balancing paper plates of food from the meagre spread on their knees, their hair still damp from the showers.

"You were right," Bumgarner says through a mouthful of lukewarm mac and cheese. Posey gives him a sidelong glance, a prompting grunt, and Bumgarner adds, "'bout the slider."

"Course I was. It's only my fuckin' job."

"Yeah. You're pretty good at it."

"Don't sound so surprised."

"I'm not." Bumgarner bumps Posey's knee with his own, indecently pleased when Posey doesn't twitch away. "I've seen ya."

A soft snort from Posey, like he thinks Bumgarner's screwing with him but that's a poor interpretation of things. Posey peels the wrapper back on a Powerbar, licking his tacky fingertips before taking a bite. Bumgarner is definitely watching too closely, pressing his leg into Posey's, sucking on the inside of his cheek and imagining that he's got Posey's fingers in his mouth instead, calluses on his tongue, catching his teeth, and Bumgarner's ears go hot, wicked flush lighting him up from the inside.

"So, um," Bumgarner says senselessly, wanting conversation because he can't just sit here looking at Posey for much longer without doing something irrevocable. "Thanks for that. I, I, I'll throw what you call, I'll try anyway."

Posey gives him a sidelong look. Bumgarner stares back, various things showing on his face. Posey half-smiles.

"Good enough," Posey says, and Bumgarner is about to do something stupid like ask him to come over and get drunk with him and see what happens, but luckily Posey folds his plate between his hands and gets up to chuck it in the bin, so Bumgarner doesn't actually go through with it.

 _Small mercies_ , he thinks, watching Buster get distracted and pulled away by one of the trainers, knowing he won't make it back over here. Today was a good day by almost every measure. Madison can deal with going home alone.

*

They don't screw around again that home-stand.

Bumgarner tries not to wait for it, tries not to linger in the clubhouse so that he can time his walk and run into Posey at the door, tries not to insinuate himself into Posey's plans for the night, tries not to talk too much or give too much away, rubbing sweaty palms on his jeans, daydreaming.

Sergio Romo, a relief pitcher on the major league roster who's finishing up a stint on the DL with a few innings down in the bus leagues, takes everybody out drinking one night, and two hours in the guys are shouting exuberantly at each other over air hockey in the back room, jammed six to a booth with their legs making an intricate shin-and-knee root system under the table.

"Class act, class act," Noonan keeps saying, pounding Romo on the back like he's just won a stock car race.

Bumgarner makes a note of that, in case he's ever in the same situation, big leaguer hanging out with the journeymen, gotta buy their beers for them because that's only fair. But it's a bit weird, because Romo's got to be making the league minimum, and Buster Posey's signing bonus was approximately twelve times that, and Bumgarner can count on one hand the number of beers Posey has spotted him thus far into their tumultuous though admittedly brief acquaintance. There must be a loophole or something.

After one or two too many, Bumgarner is giddy on his feet and making bad decisions, watching Posey like he's being paid to and following thirty seconds behind when Posey goes to the men's.

Posey is the only one in there, standing at the urinal with his head dropped back, and he looks over his shoulder when Bumgarner comes in, a cynical curl affecting his mouth.

"Y'all right, kid?" Posey drawls.

Bumgarner fidgets with his back to the door, his fingers scrabbling anxiously at his jeans. He's forgotten why he thought it would be a good idea to come in here, terminally distracted by the width of Posey's shoulders and the faint flush on the nape of his neck.

"'m fine," Bumgarner says, not sounding anything like it.

Posey doesn't look back at him, finishes and zips up and goes to run his hands under the water, forgoing soap because it's that awful gritty powder kind. There's a cracked mirror over the sink and their eyes meet in the reflection, Bumgarner over Posey's shoulder and framed by the door, eyes looking huge and panicky and his ears sticking out like open car doors. Bumgarner has never known what Posey sees in him, doesn't know if Posey is seeing it now.

"You want me to suck your dick, man?" Bumgarner asks, hoarse and not slurring much.

Posey's head jerks, face going briefly slack with surprise before two spots of bright color flare on his cheeks, and his mouth snags into a caustic shape, rolling his eyes. Bumgarner's stomach drops like a stone.

"Gettin' a taste for it, ain't ya?" Posey says, cruel tone meant to scare Bumgarner off but it doesn't have its right effect because that's true--fuck it, it's _true_.

"Yeah," Bumgarner says.

Their eyes meet in the mirror again for just a second, something shuttered and searching in Posey's expression before he clams up, reaffixes his smirk.

"'preciate the offer, but we're not in San Francisco yet; this ain't that kinda place."

That hangs Bumgarner up for a second, makes him stop short, because what, are they gonna still be doing this when they make it to the bigs? That could be _years_ from now.

Bumgarner clenches his back teeth carefully on his tongue, breathes through his nose a few times. "No, I mean, whenever. Not right this second, but we could, we could go somewhere."

"Coulda shoulda woulda," Posey mutters, and snatches a paper towel out of the metal thingy. He dries his hands briskly and chucks it away, telling Bumgarner, "Come find me in Modesto if you still want it that bad," before shouldering him aside and walking out.

Bumgarner stands there for awhile longer, adrenaline crashing down inside him along with humiliation and general bewilderment. His reflection in the mirror blinks back at him from across the empty room: drunk dull-eyed wavery kid with too-long arms and stupid ears, looking so far gone it's a wonder he doesn't forget how to breathe.

*

Bumgarner wants to play it cool for awhile, hang back all aloof and make Buster come to him for a change, but then three hours after they pull into Modesto, there he is knocking on Posey's motel room door with a sixer of Bud and two condoms burning a hole in his back pocket no matter how he tries to keep from thinking about them.

He chickens out at the last moment, though, and lets Posey strip his jeans away from his legs and toss them off the bed without saying, _hey wait lemme get something first_ , without digging the condoms out and showing them to Buster, without seeing what his face might look like, his eyes. Bumgarner can't do it, words sticking in his throat. He has Posey on top of him now, warm palm wrapped around his thigh, holding him open, Posey leaning down to mouth hotly along Bumgarner's shoulder, and Bumgarner doesn't say anything but, "Yeah, please," because he can't risk any of it.

After they both get off and get cleaned up, Bumgarner puts his jeans back on but forgoes his shirt, liking the way Posey's eyes sometimes drift downwards when he's talking. Posey is wearing sweats and a workout shirt without sleeves, slumped back against the pillows with one hand scratching idly at his stomach, lax and easy the way he always gets, something Bumgarner has learned to look for.

Bumgarner sits on the edge of the bed, the fingers of one hand twiddling at the sheets. He doesn't want to leave yet, even though he's pretty sure Posey expects him to.

"So," Bumgarner says, not looking at Posey. "What do you think about this guy Riordan tomorrow? You got a plan to deal with that split of his?"

"Yeah, don't swing at it." Posey tips his head to the side. "Did you come over to make sure I read the pitcher notes?"

"No," and Bumgarner kinda laughs a little because it seems like maybe it could be a joke, just Buster ragging on him, totally normal. "Just, uh. You want another beer?"

Posey gives him this inscrutable look, small mouth and piercing eyes, and then shrugs like it couldn't be less important to him. "Yeah, whatever."

Bumgarner will take that. He tries not to be too overeager as he grabs the beers from the sink full of ice and brings one over to Posey, settling on the bed beside him because they're drinking beers now, hanging out like regular friends, so it's okay for Bumgarner to be next to him on the bed where they just had sex.

The first swallow goes down the wrong pipe and Bumgarner's cool dissolves in a fit of helpless coughing that has Posey whaling on his back and saying, "Shit who taught you how to drink?"

Madison calms, his face red and his eyes teary. He takes a sheepish second drink.

"'s pretty good when it's not trying to kill me," Bumgarner says in a torn-up voice, and Posey glances at him, a little smile.

"You're gonna have to swallow a lot worse than that if you wanna last in this game."

"I do," Bumgarner says, kinda wobbly like he's been punched in the head. "I, I intend to last."

"Yeah me too," Posey says on a sigh.

Bumgarner can't think of anything else to say, and so hides behind long sips of his beer, carefully eyeing Posey next to him, the tattered edge of his shirt against his smooth shoulder, the easy sprawl of his legs, the raspy stubble on his cheek that Madison can still feel against his neck and chest, Buster's mouth gone soft now that they've come back to these simpler things.

Posey manages to give the impression of sinking as he works at his beer, his eyelids pulling down heavily, and after a minute or two of fairly awkward silence, he thunks the can down on the bedside table, still at least half-full, and says, "Awright, I'm fuckin' falling asleep, man."

"Oh." Bumgarner sits up a little to put down his own beer, glances at the door, the quiet night and empty room waiting for him on the other side, and says, "Guess I'm kinda tired too."

"Yeah, so," Posey says, stretching his legs down the bed and waving towards the door in a clear invitation for Bumgarner to leave before shutting his eyes.

And Bumgarner should go, knows he should, absolutely is going to, and then instead he hears himself saying, "I could crash here."

Posey's eyes snap open. "What?"

"I mean." Bumgarner doesn't know what he means. He blinks down at Posey, thinking urgently about twenty minutes ago when Posey's hands cupped over his ears had the whole world roaring like the inside of a conch shell, and Posey's cock against the back of his throat made it so he could hardly breathe, and Posey crooned his name and panted and pulled him as close as he could get, just as deep, and now Madison doesn't have the first idea what to say.

"I could stick around," Bumgarner says, minefield caution layered in his voice. "We could. Get some sleep and then--again, we could do this again."

His hand curls against his jeans pocket, those two condoms crinkling silently under his fingertips. Heat rushes across his skin, can't tell if it's mortification or desire or if there's much of a difference, at this point, and Bumgarner grits his teeth, forces himself to look at Posey, who's looking right back, looking poleaxed and weirdly flushed.

"That's not how it goes," Posey says flatly.

Bumgarner swallows. "It could. We could."

"That, that's not what this _is_ , Jesus, haven't you been paying attention?"

Posey sounds angry but he looks mostly lost, face all opened up and blue eyes wide. Bumgarner closes his hands into fists instead of doing anything stupid like touching Posey's cheek, tracing the line of his neck, any of that.

"I have," Bumgarner says. "But it's. Confusing. I've been pretty confused."

A weird flash of something descends in Posey's eyes, and he sits up. "What did I tell you about that? Thinking about it all the time, what the fuck did you expect to happen?"

"I don't know. I, I thought I knew what was going on, just a road thing, and then after Tommy got hurt-"

"That wasn't--that didn't mean anything," Posey says fast, as if accused. "That was just 'cause I took a fuckin' beating in that game, I just wanted some, something. It wasn't--you were just there. And you're, you're always _looking_ at me."

Posey stops abruptly like biting his tongue, and his eyes flare with sky-colored panic before he shutters it away behind a glare. He said too much, Bumgarner realizes in a vague stupor, more than he meant to.

"You told me I could," Bumgarner says. "You said I had to take it where I could get it."

"You don't get _me_ ," Posey says in a hard tone that seems chipped out of his regular voice.

"Why not?" and Bumgarner can't even believe it himself, wanting to bite off his own tongue but he doesn't even stop there, "What's the difference, if we're fucking around on the road why can't we at home? And who cares if I sleep over, who's that hurt? All these stupid rules-"

"Shut _up_."

It cuts sharp and too loud and Bumgarner's mouth snaps shut so quick his teeth click, because Posey sounds kinda frantic and he looks worse, violent flush on his face and his eyes bugging out, as if he physically can't hear Bumgarner speak or else his head will explode. Bumgarner experiences a lessening feeling like his chest has been punctured, like he's leaking air, and he blinks fast, drops his eyes.

"Sorry," Bumgarner says low. "I'm bad at this, I think."

"Yeah, I'd fuckin' say so," and Posey sounds breathless, which doesn't seem possible.

Madison glances up, and vertigo swoops through him when he catches Posey staring back with blank fascination, his lips parted and his blue eyes glowing in this bizarre backlit way, a whole new shade. Madison stares back at him, stunned, and then says without thinking:

"I wanna kiss you."

For just an instant, Posey's breath stutters and his gaze drops to Bumgarner's mouth, and Bumgarner's heart jolts unsteadily in his chest, goosebumps rushing over him as he licks his lips and tips hesitantly forward, petrified and trembly and aching with dreams of the world to come if he can just--

And then shock clears Posey's expression, and he shoves Bumgarner almost off the bed.

"No way, man." Posey's voice cracks. He looks like Bumgarner just pulled a knife on him, betrayal growing huge behind fear for his goddamn life. "Not gonna do that."

Bumgarner nods his head, chest caved in, heart buried in rubble. He gets up off the bed and his legs wobble but he stays up. He finds his T-shirt on the floor and pulls it on like armor, collar still a little too tight, raspy soft against his throat and if Bumgarner can't swallow right, that's a good enough excuse for it. Posey watches him, a frown on his face that Bumgarner really doesn't need to see right now.

"Sorry," Bumgarner says again, because it can't possibly make things worse. "We can just. Forget about that. All that."

Posey doesn't answer, but his mouth twists up in something near enough to a sneer to serve as a response. Bumgarner flinches and rubs at the back of his neck and looks down, feeling incompetent in about four different ways, getting all of this wrong. He whispers, "'kay then," and turns towards the door, thinking terrible thoughts and not at all expecting Buster to say goodnight as he leaves, but still irrationally disappointed when he doesn't.

*

Off the field itself, Bumgarner doesn't go near Posey for the rest of the road trip.

It's not very difficult. They go out to dinner with different groups of guys. They sit in different sections of the bus. There's always at least three teammates separating them on the dugout bench. Not much has to change to keep them apart, basically Bumgarner just has to stop following Posey around like a fucking puppy, and Posey has to stop showing up in Bumgarner's motel rooms wanting to fuck around with him, and both those things have happened.

It's disconcerting. Bumgarner has been laboring under the impression that the two of them were at least friends before all this shit happened, that somewhere underneath everything was a fundamentally affectionate and companionable kinda feeling, but apparently that's another thing he spectacularly misunderstood. It's actually something of a relief for Bumgarner not to concern himself with actually talking to Posey anymore, because most of their recent conversations have been pretty agonizing in one way or another, and they never had such a witty repartee anyway, and if they were real friends it wouldn't be like this. If they were real friends, Bumgarner would miss him, and he doesn't really, he doesn't think he does. It's a different sort of hurt.

The good thing about not talking much as a general rule is that people don't really notice when he pretty much stops talking entirely. Madison carves out a space around himself, just a little breathing room, and keeps his headphones in, keeps his face stiff and uninviting whenever anybody gets too close. He'll talk about baseball but that's about it.

The team wins the last game of the trip 2-0, and then on the long drive back to San Jose, they listen on the radio as the San Francisco Giants win by the exact same score. This freaky premonitory sense creeps over them, weird little see-the-future moments like Villalona saying, "He's gonna hit a double," and then it happens, and two innings later it's Conor Gillaspie calling it, "Home run!" just before the bat cracks with that good sound, unmistakeable even over the radio, from however far away they are. They're collectively an omen of some kind, and most of the guys are raucously declaring it a miracle, but Bumgarner thinks the whole thing is pretty eerie.

From the back of the bus, in the break between songs, he hears Posey saying, "It's _improbable_ , not _impossible_ , didn't any of you dumb fucks pay attention in math class ever?"

The next song starts up before Bumgarner can hear whatever the response might be. His eyes are closed, his head tipped on the window with lines drawn across his forehead, his mouth pinched, not faking sleep with much skill at all, but nobody's watching and nobody cares, they all leave him alone.

Bumgarner has forbidden himself to think about Posey or that stuff that happened, and that doesn't work very well. He feels fucking terrible about how everything ended up, and he doesn't know why exactly, if it's shame or guilt or regret or if he's secretly in love with Posey and this is actual honest-to-god _heartbreak_ , of all things. He just knows he could have done better. Kept his mouth shut, kept his hands to himself, something. Bumgarner could have done a lot of things.

On a loop in his mind, Buster tells him, _no way, man_ ; it sticks to him like a burr.

Home, as much as California is ever going to feel like home to Madison, but he's yearning for it right now, the flat silver stretch of the bay and tall hills crowded in close and covered with houses, low-slung skyline with the sun glaring off the dark-tinted windows of the technology companies downtown and Bumgarner's own crappy minor league apartment where he can lock the door and turn off his phone and take a pill or three, get some goddamn sleep because this year, just his first fucking year and it's already killing him.

*

A few days pass in which nothing outwardly important happens.

The San Jose Giants continue playing well, for all that their home park reminds Bumgarner of where he played in the Babe Ruth League when he was fourteen, still a real live professional baseball team. When Bumgarner throws a double play ball, the guys behind him make the turn almost every single time, which still seems remarkable to him.

He's been pitching lights out. The coaches mutter to each other and hum while watching him pitch, and after Madison goes eight shutout innings with his new split-changeup vanishing like a ghost from the corner of the strike zone, they clap him on the shoulder and say, "Keep your bags packed, kid, they might need you in Connecticut before too long."

Connecticut means Double-A, the next stop. Bumgarner swallows back a terrified grin and shrugs and nods, casually dropping his hand down so he could rap his knuckles silently on the bench, not wanting to jinx anything. He doesn't keep his bags packed, either.

Bumgarner wakes up at noon on their off-day, in a slant of heavy July sunlight that is falling unrestricted through the opened blinds, sweat prickling in Bumgarner's hair and at the small of his back where his shirt is stuck a little bit.

The heat is the only thing that woke him, and Bumgarner lies there thinking about getting up to close the blinds so he could get some more sleep, and while he's debating it, his phone on the bedside table springs to shrill life.

It's Posey calling. Bumgarner stares at the screen for a moment, and then takes the call, lifting the phone to his ear and saying hesitantly, "Hello?"

"Hey man."

Buster freakin' Posey, sure enough. Bumgarner kicks the thin sheet off his legs, sits up. "Uh, hi Buster."

"Did I wake you up? Lazy, lazy."

"No, I'm awake. What. What's up?"

A pause, a rustle of breath crackling in Bumgarner's ears. "I'm at this sandwich place," Posey says eventually, though it sounds quiet behind him. "You want me to get you one and bring it over?"

Bumgarner is bewildered, struck dumb for a long moment because, _what?_ Posey wants to bring him lunch? Is that some kind of compensation for not wanting to kiss Madison, or not wanting to fuck him anymore? Like, sorry if I accidentally broke your heart, here's some tuna salad. Is this how the world actually works? And people just go along with it?

"What the hell, Mad," Posey says, disgruntled. "Do you want a sandwich or not?"

"Yeah," Bumgarner says, because indeed, what the hell. "Just, uh, whatever you're getting is cool. No pickles."

"Awright," Posey says, and promptly hangs up.

Bumgarner blinks at his phone for a moment, and then up at the ceiling for a moment longer, and then levers himself out of bed to go take a shower and brush his teeth.

Posey shows up fifteen minutes later with sandwiches in a white paper bag and a cup of coffee that he's drinking out of when he comes in, but immediately passes off to Bumgarner.

"Just checkin' it out for you," Posey says with a cheeky grin.

Bumgarner tries to mirror it but it feels like a pretty weak imitation, and takes a studying sip of the coffee, which is not fixed to his specifications but instead painfully sweet the way Posey likes it.

"Grab a Coke if you want," Bumgarner says, and flees back to the living room, heart beating hard even though all Posey has done is show up and give him a cup of coffee.

They settle on the couch with the San Francisco Giants day game on the TV, and Bumgarner is picking at the tape keeping his sandwich wrapped up when Posey puts his down on the coffee table and says:

"I got called up this morning."

Bumgarner drops his sandwich in his lap. He stares at Posey. "Are you serious?"

"Of course I'm serious, and that's not even the half of it," and Posey swells with bravado, cocky tilt to his smile. "Called me up to fuckin' Fresno, how do you like that?"

"Holy shit, really?"

"Goddamn right." Posey spreads out his hands, like, what did you expect? "Double-A would be a waste of my time, that's what skip said."

"Jeez, Buster," as the shock fades a bit and Bumgarner remembers the stuff he's supposed to say. "That's so awesome, man, congratulations."

"Thanks, yeah. Thanks."

A moment of silence wedges its way between them, and Bumgarner thumbs the half-peeled bit of tape on his sandwich, which was probably just an excuse for Posey to come over here; they're probably not actually having lunch together. He doesn't want it to get too awkward because he's tired of looking like an idiot in front of Posey, especially now that they might not see each other for however long, when it'll be Posey's last impression of him.

"So when're you leaving?" Bumgarner thinks to ask.

"In, uh, like, two hours, actually." Posey flashes a grin that looks kinda off. "They got a car picking me up so I can get there in time for their game tonight in case they need me."

"Cool, that's cool."

A stony place forms in Bumgarner's gut, thinking about how Posey is going to make the Show before the end of the season and not even remember Madison by the time he makes it up himself. Bumgarner shouldn't care about that. Out of sight out of mind, and god willing it'll work for both of them.

He glances at Posey, who has lost his imperfect grin and is sorta glaring at him instead. Bumgarner pulls back slightly, lifting his eyebrows in confusion.

Posey doesn't look away, doesn't stop looking vaguely pissed off, and asks, "So what's your deal, anyway?"

"What?"

"The whole-" Posey makes a crude gesture that indicates blowjobs, "-thing."

"I, I don't know," Bumgarner stammers as a flush rises on his face.

"You were so serious about it all the time," Posey says like an accusation.

"I didn't mean to be. I was just trying to. Figure it out."

"So. What? You think you're really gay or something?"

"No," Bumgarner says with a blink, honestly surprised by the question. "I still wanna fuck all kindsa girls."

"But also me," Posey says, staring at him.

"Also you," Bumgarner agrees softly. He's bright red now, he can feel it.

"Well."

Posey sets that word between them, leaves it there for an agonizing moment, and then a shadow crosses his eyes and he says in a thick, slightly strained tone, "I'll fuck you, if you want."

Bumgarner gapes at him for a few seconds. Heat coalesces almost painfully in his stomach, tingling out to the tips of his fingers, the ends of his hair, and his tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth, his hand clenching compulsively on his knee.

Very carefully, Bumgarner puts his sandwich down on the table before turning back to Posey, who is watching him fiercely with his lips pressed together, blue eyes furious and baffled in a way that Bumgarner can sympathize with, knows as well as his own face in the mirror.

"You came over here 'cause of that?" Bumgarner asks.

"No, I, I came to tell you about going to Fresno. Say goodbye or whatever."

"Coulda called. You coulda sent me a text," Bumgarner says, feeling slow and stunned. Buster offering to fuck him is stuck on a loop in his head, just like Buster telling him _no way_ used to be.

Posey looks offended, sneering. "Sending a text to say goodbye isn't buddies, now is it?"

"We're not really buddies. " A quiet internal click, and Bumgarner looks at Posey, realizing that that's true. "I don't think if you were my buddy you'd only want to fuck me when you're leaving in two hours."

That hits Posey like a smack, his mouth dropping open and his eyes bugging out. He sorta reels back, a grimace contorting his features, not good-looking at all for the brief moment before he pulls himself back together.

"That was for _you_ ," Posey insists, going a bit wild-eyed. "I thought you, thought that was what you wanted."

"It is," Bumgarner says, hoarse. "A lot--I want it a lot. And that's--you're not even gonna be around anymore."

Swallowing, he drops his eyes down at his woven fingers, rubbing one thumb hard into the cup of his palm. Posey's gaze bores into him, a physical weight that Bumgarner's shoulders are stiff from supporting.

"You'd rather never have it at all?" Posey asks. "I mean, what if this is, like--this is your one shot."

Looking up at the shaky note in Posey's voice, Bumgarner catches his breath at the weird panic tightening the corners of Posey's eyes, the desperate angle of his jaw. Everything about Posey is an obscure plea right now, and a knot wrenches itself tighter and tighter in Bumgarner's stomach because he's starting to understand that he's not the only one who wants more time than two hours--he's just the only one willing to say it out loud.

Goddamn, it's all so fucked up. Clenching his teeth, Bumgarner fists his hands, nails digging into his palms.

"I got no interest in just one shot," Madison tells Buster. "That's sorta the whole problem."

A guide-wire snaps behind Posey's face, the tension collapsing into something stricken and round-eyed, and Bumgarner can't look at him like that, turns his burning gaze to the Giants game television instead, the impossibly pretty ballpark drenched in sun fifty miles north, their cross-fingered future.

"Sorry," Bumgarner mumbles, already fighting the urge to take it back.

Posey is frozen for a second in his peripheral vision, and then he shakes his head sharply and makes a raspy throat-clearing sound.

"What sorry, it, it's your loss," Posey says, sounding fake.

Bumgarner doesn't call him on it, staring helplessly at the television. "Yeah."

"And I-"

Posey stops like someone pressed mute. His teeth click together audibly, and Bumgarner does not look at him because he knows if he does, force of will be damned, Posey will have him bent over the couch inside five minutes, have Bumgarner begging for it and ruined forever. Can't let that happen.

"It's all right," Bumgarner says, fumbling. "It's--gonna be all right. You just, just get yourself to Fresno, just focus on that."

"Speakin' from your many years of experience, huh?"

"No, that's just--that's the important part. Getting there. Everything else can go to hell."

Madison's voice cracks at the end there. It's something his dad said to him not too long ago, point of fact, that lovely rainy afternoon when he got drafted, and with his big hand clasped on the back of Madison's neck, his father told him joyfully, "You're gonna be a ballplayer, and everything else can go to hell."

It's the kinda thing that will echo with you.

"Yeah," Posey says, and Bumgarner glances to see him looking bewildered and wounded, rubbing a hand across his face as if expecting to find someone else's features. "Okay."

He picks up his sandwich off the table and gets to his feet, and Bumgarner follows suit automatically. Posey reassembles his game face, mouth firming up, shutters dropping in his eyes. Bumgarner doesn't bother to hide the fact that he's staring. Last chance and all.

Posey glances at him as they move for the door, his throat ducking with a swallow. Bumgarner opens the door for him, fingers wrapped around cool metal, eyes tracking restlessly over Posey's pinched mouth and stiff shoulders.

"Take care, Buster," Bumgarner says.

"Yeah. You too." Posey walks out and then pauses, looking away down the hallway. "Guess I'll see you somewhere along the way."

"Yeah," Bumgarner manages, and then fast, "Bye," as he swings the door shut behind Posey, sags against it at once because Jesus _Christ_ , this can't be a normal thing that's happening in his chest right now--surely somebody would have warned him if this is what it's supposed to feel like.

*

It's just two months before they see each other again, and by that time they've both made the Show.

Posey gets called up with the other hot shots in Fresno when the rosters expand at the beginning of September, information Bumgarner learns from the internet because it's not as if Posey is gonna call and tell him about it himself. They haven't spoken since Posey left San Jose.

Then a guy from the organization calls Bumgarner shortly after the season ends in Connecticut, and he's expecting to hear that he's being shipped to the fall league, but instead they tell him that Tim Lincecum's back is acting up, and the next thing he knows, Bumgarner is on the first flight to San Francisco.

Bumgarner is nervous on the plane and worse in the cab that takes him to the ballpark, shredding a magazine into confetti that trails behind him all the way across the country. He's got a thick blue binder of hitter's notes for the Padres that the ballclub had FedExed to him, and he studies it haphazardly, too amped up to really get into it. The San Francisco Giants are technically still alive in the chase for the division title, five games out and two teams back, but crazier things have happened.

Like, for example, twenty year old Madison Bumgarner making a spot start in place of Tim freakin' Lincecum.

Everything moves really fast at this level. Once he gets to the gorgeous bayside ballpark, Bumgarner is hustled along, new uniform, new spikes, and then they take him up for a whirlwind tour of the operations offices where his hand gets wrung and his back gets slapped a bunch of times and he is introduced to a ton of people he'll never remember, and then they take him down to the clubhouse and hand him over to his new teammates, who envelop him in a wave of rookie cat-calls and hammer friendly blows on the top of his head.

They seem like a good group of guys. Barry Zito and Tim Lincecum come over right away as emissaries of the pitching staff, and they say all the right stuff, welcome and we've been hearing about you and all that, and they show him around the place, tour guiding. Sergio Romo gives him a bear hug by the coffee maker, lifting Bumgarner up on his toes.

Lincecum doesn't look like his back is hurting him that much, slouching easily against various walls, smiling a lot. He's even smaller than he looks on TV, and Bumgarner is going to have to witness this guy throwing high-nineties with his own eyes before he can really believe it.

Posey isn't around--probably down in the batting cages, if his routine is the same--and Bumgarner is pathetically grateful for that, wanting to get his bearings before having to deal with Buster.

Later, he gets changed into his uniform, major league jersey sliding over his shoulders, major league buttons under his fingers. Bumgarner isn't shaking, kinda detached from the whole thing right now, taking slow shallow breaths.

He goes up to the field to take his warm-ups, moving backwards across the outfield in an ever-increasing game of long toss with the bullpen catcher. It's an optical illusion, probably, the way everything looks bigger up here, like home plate is six hundred feet away from him. It's the steep rise of the stands, thousands and thousands of dark green seats like a sea wave closing around him. Bumgarner focuses on Holm's catcher's mitt, the long whip of his body hurling the ball back to the line. He can hear the wind snapping through the flags at his back.

Dazed, starstruck, something, Bumgarner finishes warming up in the bullpen and escapes into the dugout tunnel before a children's choir troops onto the field to sing the national anthem. There's a clock ticking down in his mind as he hurries down to the bathroom, spikes clattering loud on the cement, and hunches over the sink splashing cold water on his face.

"Breathe," Bumgarner orders, and looks up in the mirror to see himself in his brand-new Giants uniform, and just stares for a minute.

Then Posey comes in.

Bumgarner jumps at the thump of the door opening, his hands curling around the lip of the sink as he watches Posey in the mirror, also wearing a Giants uniform but otherwise exactly as Bumgarner remembers him.

"Hey man," Posey says.

"Hey. Buster," Bumgarner says, a hitched breath breaking up the words.

"Did you hurl?"

"No."

"You can tell me, lotsa guys do that before their first time."

Bumgarner presses his chilled hands to his cheeks and forehead. "'m all right."

"Yeah you look it." Posey has his hands behind his back, leaning against the door. "You ready for this shit?"

"Course."

Snatching a paper towel out of the box, Bumgarner scrubs his face dry, taking a couple deep breaths that smell like wood pulp and hard water. He sneaks glances at Posey in the mirror, something winding tighter and tighter in his chest.

"Good," Buster says, and his shoulders kinda twitch against the door. "Good."

It kinda trails off and gets awkward, and Bumgarner tosses the paper towel, pushes his hands across his hair and puts his cap back on. He exhales through his mouth, shakes his arms out, and thinks sharply to himself, _okay here we go_ , as he turns to leave.

Posey is still blocking the door, staring at him with that weird lost look on his face that really bugs the hell out of Madison; he can never tell what it's supposed to mean.

Bumgarner lifts his eyebrows. "Buster?"

"Yeah," and Posey starts, snaps out of it, shifting to the side. "Yeah they're waitin' for you."

He goes to open the door and Bumgarner moves without thought, pressing his hand flat to keep it closed. Posey goes still, his chin tipped slightly up, and a little huffing breath escapes him.

Anticipation flares in Bumgarner, that same old electricity crackling between them, and he thinks manically that he'll lean forward, close these last few bare inches between them and kiss Posey like he's been waiting to do all goddamn year, kiss him good and hard while holding him against the door, hands on his face, Posey's mouth crushed under his, bodies fast together, and Jesus, he wants that so badly, as much as the field waiting for him on the other side of the tunnel and the jersey on his back, as much as any of this.

Bumgarner tilts towards him, and Posey's eyes widen a fraction before he turns his head to the side, refusing.

"Fuck, you're not still on that, are you?" Posey says hoarsely and false. "Should be over it by now."

Bumgarner doesn't answer. He stares at Posey's cheek, which twitches like his teeth are clenched, and is one hundred percent sure that Posey wants to kiss him too, and with all the crazy shit that has happened to him this summer, he has no idea why this one little thing is still not allowed.

"You got more important stuff to worry about, c'mon," Posey tells him, eyes trained stubbornly away. "Everything else can go to hell, right?"

Right, that's right, that's Bumgarner's dad echoing in his head and it straightens his spine, the palms of his hands tingling in need of a baseball. He nods, and forces himself to take a step back, let his hand fall away from the door. Posey relaxes slightly, his eyes flicking across Bumgarner's features.

"Game face, Mad," Posey says softly, and opens the door for him.

Bumgarner does what he can, deep breath and firm jaw and cap brim tugged down so his eyes can glare out from a thin strip of shadow, pulls his shoulders up and heads up to the field.

He pitches okay. Two runs over five and a third, and then the Giants end up losing the game late.

It's pretty anticlimactic, actually, his whole life spent on build-up and then he finally gets out there and it's just another game where he couldn't quite locate his fastball like he wants to. The umpire kinda screws him over as regards the corners of the strikezone, but Madison figures he's going to have to get used to that for at least the first couple of years. Bengie Molina is a good backstop, a comfortingly solid bulk behind the plate with white tape wrapped around his fingertips so Bumgarner can see the signs a bit easier--he's always appreciated catchers who do that. He throws a couple of scorched line drives that he's certain will split the fielders for doubles, and then in flies Freddy Lewis or Aaron Rowand, streaking across the grass and stretching full-out to make the play. That part is extremely encouraging.

But the adrenaline doesn't last, sapped away by his more urgent concern that they win this fucking game. Something has to go right today.

And then they lose anyway, like Bumgarner isn't actually the hero of the movie, and none of this has been scripted at all. Things that shouldn't surprise him, and yet.

He and Posey are with the team for the last three weeks of 2009, as the Giants fade from the pennant chase and the winds die down in San Francisco. Posey does a pretty good job of avoiding him, impressive considering the club has put them up in the same downtown hotel, and sometimes Bumgarner passes Posey in the lobby talking on his cell phone, poking at the bowl of hard candy on the concierge's desk, in the gift shop buying postcards and a little stuffed SF teddy bear holding a heart. Bumgarner concocts fantastical daydreams about the two of them getting stuck in an elevator, or maybe there will be an earthquake and somehow in the chaos and wholesale collapse they'll be unhurt but trapped together under an aesthetically pleasing pile of rubble, and Posey won't be able to pretend he's not there. But mostly he just lets Posey ignore him. It's been a really long year already.

They're in the same game for one inning, in the dulling canyon of Dodger Stadium, and Posey comes out to go over the game-plan after Bumgarner has finished his warm-up throws. Still no eye contact, Posey gazing steadily over Bumgarner's shoulder. There's a scratch on Posey's cheek, and Bumgarner wants to feel it under his thumb, this one place where Buster's not perfect.

Stupid impossible thoughts. Bumgarner crosses up the signs, throws a slider when Posey's expecting the fastball, which is probably about fifty percent on purpose, because he wants Posey to come back out here again, but Posey only whips the ball back from his knees, and calls for the same pitch again.

*

Then it's the off-season.

Bumgarner flies home to North Carolina by way of New York City, where he schedules a day-long layover, telling his family he's got some friends he wants to visit, but actually it's a fact-finding mission. He gets a room near the airport, showers and shaves and puts on a shirt that's been too tight on him since junior year, and takes a cab into the heart of the city.

The internet directs him to a glitter strip of clubs and bars, heart thundering in his ears as the bouncer squints at his fake I.D., but he makes it in, and then at 1:47 in the morning, in a backroom somewhere in Chelsea, Madison fucks a guy for the first time, hands tied up in his T-shirt, gasping against the slick nape of his neck, his short sticky hair getting in Madison's nose. He likes it exactly as much as he likes fucking girls; that is to say, to a debilitating degree.

He has a long cold winter to put the whole thing in perspective.

Back home in Hudson, he screws around a little bit with an old girlfriend who's mainly using him to make her new on-and-off guy jealous. Bumgarner doesn't mind, interested in this new kind of sex that doesn't mean anything. Couple times a month, he drives out to Raleigh-Durham and lets someone pick him up at a gay bar, or sometimes just kinda lurks near the backroom all night and blows five different guys because he can and he wants to, and no one knows his name or that he's left-handed or that he's gonna be a ballplayer; they'll never see him again, so it doesn't count in any real way.

He has it all figured out by Christmas. He swings both ways, probably always has without knowing it, and that's why he went for Buster so hard, so single-mindedly. Just because Buster was the first, because Madison didn't realize before that. It makes sense, because Madison still remembers the full name of the girl in the second grade who gave him his first kiss: Keandra Dawn Washington with the multicolored plastic beads at the ends of her braids clicking like music when she swung her hair. It was never anything about Buster specifically; they were never even really friends.

So that's settled, anyway.

The time creeps by, and Bumgarner feels like he's aged about five years by the time he leaves for spring training.

Pitchers and catchers report on Valentine's Day. Posey is already there when Bumgarner walks into the clubhouse, stocking his new locker with assorted gear and paraphernalia while chatting with that gray-haired guy who backs up Molina on the big league squad. Bumgarner drags his eyes away from him with some effort, a twinge of anxiety flexing his fingers against his leg.

Bumgarner wanders around looking for the locker with his name on the bit of tape, shaking hands of the guys he knows here and there, and he finds it the last place he wants to: right next to Buster Posey's.

Bumgarner sighs internally, and goes over to drop his bag at the foot of the locker and start unpacking. Posey has gone back with the trainers, but he returns soon enough with two rolls of white tape ringed around his fingers, his eyebrows lifting coolly as he registers his new neighbor.

"Hell, so much for this being the cool section of the clubhouse," Posey says as he puts the tape rolls on the shelf in his locker and turns to Bumgarner, hesitating a moment before offering his hand.

Bumgarner takes it, good firm-wrist shake like his dad taught him, and says, "How you doing, man?"

"How's it look, what do you think."

Posey's eyes crawl across Bumgarner's face and then skitter away, a hand rising to the back of his neck. He's still boyish and serious-looking and handsome and Bumgarner still wants to kiss him, still wants to push Posey's shirt up to his armpits and his pants down to his knees, lay him out on a motel room bed and suck him off for about an hour. _Fuck_ , nothing at all has changed. Bumgarner swallows back acid, the inside of his cheek caught between his back teeth.

"Good to see you," Bumgarner says, directing most of his attention to digging gear out of his bag and placing them in his locker: spikes and extra spikes, batting gloves, deodorant and neat's foot oil and the stuff to put on blisters, a photograph of his family that gets tucked inside a little black copy of the official rules and poked into the back corner of the shelf.

Posey is watching him. Dull heat suffuses Bumgarner's face, hyper-aware.

"Did they tell you where you were gonna be starting the year?" Posey asks him.

Bumgarner shrugs without looking at him. "Depends how I go this spring."

"Probably Fresno, though, right?"

"I dunno. Maybe. Maybe fifth starter," and Bumgarner raps his knuckles softly on the wood of the locker.

"Well."

Just that, that place-holder Posey likes to use, and hearing him say it spurs an acute pang of memory in Bumgarner, déjà vu so intense it's kind of dizzying, and Bumgarner hooks one of the cheap white folding chairs scattered all over, sinks into it before he falls over.

Quick glance, and their eyes meet for a second before Posey looks away, a blind stare briefly into his locker before fumbling the spring schedule out of his pocket and unfolding it, busying himself with taping it to the inside wall. Bumgarner watches Posey's hands at work, the white bite of his teeth ripping a piece of tape off the strip, and can't help but wonder if all the differences between them can be solved by something as simple as once again being on the same team.

God _damn_ it. Bumgarner chucks his spare glove into his locker with slightly more force than necessary, disappointed in himself and the world for setting him up like this.

The first few days everything goes pretty good.

Bumgarner's curveball is the first breaking pitch to come back, and right behind it the slider, snapping so satisfyingly off the table. His location is a joke and will be for about a week, but nobody is worried about that. His shoulder aches at night, that good low-down ache that means he's getting stronger. Sometimes the other pitchers hook their fingers in the net at the pitching cages and watch Bumgarner's session, Tim freakin' Lincecum humming, "Daaamn," when Madison breaks off a particularly nice one.

It's all very encouraging. Posey is probably right: they'll start Bumgarner in Trip-A and who knows where he'll be by the end of the year?

He tries not to think too much about that stuff. It's better for him to stay in the moment.

After the game and dinner and a couple of bars, a bunch of the guys go out to a nightclub in Phoenix. It's a huge converted warehouse in a shitty part of town, exposed ironwork above their heads, wired up with disco lights, strobes and reflectors. A writhing throng of club kids and yuppie scenesters fills the dancefloor, shouting conversations at the bar, one of those places where it's too loud to think.

Bumgarner is already most of the way to drunk when they get there, and then Barry Zito buys a few quick rounds of shots for everybody and Madison crosses over into completely hammered.

Posey is there, sitting at the other end of the ratty couch they've managed to stake out, short tables shining with clustered glass, and Bumgarner gets distracted by all that shit that happened last summer, remembering Posey's tongue scorching on the inside of his thigh, and how Posey would pet his hair thoughtlessly when Bumgarner was blowing him, and fold Madison's ears down, mumble _yeah good_ , stroke his thumbs over the smooth high plane of Madison's forehead.

This is no good. Bumgarner comes back to himself with a start when Sergio Romo falls off the arm of the couch and almost lands in his lap. Bumgarner shoves him back, glad that it's dark in here because he's probably blushing like crazy right now.

He gets to his feet, carefully not looking at Posey, and makes his wobbly way through the pulsing crowd, thinking to splash some cold water on his face, find some equilibrium to this drunk.

But then the men's room is jam-packed with beefy tanned guys in shiny club shirts, the stalls full of people having sex and doing cocaine, and Bumgarner gets claustrophobic and short of breath, wheels back out of there. All the windows in this place are twenty feet up the wall, so there's not even any fresh air.

He's dizzy, upside-down brain, and slumps on the wall with his head dropped into his hands. That's how Posey finds him.

"Hey hey, can't pass out here," Posey says, lifting his voice over the thudding endless music, and Bumgarner's head snaps up.

Posey is right there, backlit by the delirious carnival lights with that old smirk on his shadowy face, and Bumgarner is not prepared for that to feel like a sock to the gut. He gasps very quietly, blinking at Posey.

"What, what're you doin'?" Bumgarner asks, so confused.

"Checkin' up on your lightweight ass," Posey says like it should be obvious. "You looked like you were about to fall over."

"I, I, I'm not, I wasn't," and Bumgarner isn't even listening to himself, staring at Buster's neat closed-off face that he's been secretly missing for the better part of a year, and thinking all kinds of fucked-up thoughts about that club in New York City and those other ones in Raleigh, what it means if a guy follows you to the bathroom there, what can _happen_ \--and then somehow between the whirling colored lights and fake smoke and sickening throb of music, he loses track; here in this place somewhere between the bus leagues and the bigs, Madison is overcome, and he grabs Buster's face, hauls him in and kisses him square on the mouth.

Posey's lips part in shock, and Bumgarner takes wild advantage, pushing his tongue in recklessly and licking the rich liquor taste out of Posey's mouth, fingers slipping aimlessly over his soft hair and it's so good, rough with teeth and hot and then Posey shoves him off.

Bumgarner's back hits the wall with a solid thump he feels all through him, breath punching out in a gasp. Shock makes him go blank, did that just happen, did he really just _do that?_

Posey is the same way, staring at him flat with astonishment, his lips shaping _what the fuck_ but it's not loud enough for Bumgarner to actually hear. Bumgarner shakes his head, bugging his eyes at Posey to say _I don't know, I'm sorry_ , and Posey's mouth twists up like he doesn't even want to look at him anymore, and he turns away, leaves Madison against the wall.

"Stupid," Bumgarner whispers, can't hear that either, and so he says it some more, "stupid stupid stupid," looking down at his shoes until his head stops spinning and his stomach stops hurting and he can stand to go find the others again.

*

The next day, Bumgarner is sitting in front of his locker reading the sports section when Posey comes over talking on his cell phone.

"Yeah what time's your flight?" Posey listens, free hand idly digging around in his locker. "Awright, well, you should just take a cab right to the stadium then, I won't be able to pick you up."

Bumgarner blindly turns the page, scowling intently at the newspaper like he's never seen anything so fascinating. Posey leans on his elbow on the side of the locker, tugging his shirt up so that a piece of his hip shows, pale flash in Bumgarner's peripheral vision.

"You don't know from excited, honey," Posey says to whoever he's talking to, his voice scratchy and low and making heat flash over Bumgarner's skin, because he remembers that tone pretty goddamn well. "I've been going nuts without you around, I swear."

Strange, hearing Buster say that, and Madison blinks at the newspaper which has become a grainy colorless blur, his own hands and arms feeling very far away from him.

"I'll call you to say goodnight," Posey says, and Bumgarner can't help but glance up, seeing Posey look right at him as he says to his girlfriend, "Love you too, I'll see you soon."

Posey ends the call and tucks his phone away in his pocket, stands there looking down at Bumgarner, who looks back, stricken.

"Okay?" Posey asks him very softly, like a warning.

Bumgarner's mouth is dry, and he nods, mute. The newspaper crinkles in his grip, tearing a little, smearing ink on his palms.

"Yeah," Bumgarner whispers, because he gets it, he does. He's got no claim on Buster; he never did.

Posey's gaze sinks into him, solemn blue and unnerving enough to short-circuit Bumgarner's equilibrium and send him reeling, tumbling head over goddamn heels, which is so redundant at this point it borders on the absurd. Bumgarner swallows, feels like sandpaper going down. He folds up the sports section carefully, shaky hands hidden in the movement.

"I know better now," Bumgarner tells him, low.

It needs to stand in for a lot, for _sorry_ and _I won't do it again_ and _it's safe to be friends with me again_ , and even for some untrue stuff, like _I don't still want to_ and _it doesn't feel remotely like heartbreak, no sir_ , and Bumgarner can't say how much of that gets through, but he figures, at least the gist. He crosses his fingers under the newspaper to cover the lie, looking up at Posey like it doesn't hurt.

Then Posey nods, drops his eyes, and says, "Good," with a coarse undertone so close to remorse that Bumgarner can't risk thinking about it, and changes the subject to the new split-change grip Timmy was talking about earlier.

Bumgarner latches onto the life-raft of baseball with unseemly fervor, rummaging for a ball in his locker so that Posey can show him, and then hollering for Lincecum to come over and show him _properly_ , and of course Lincecum brings Zito along because when does he not, and for awhile Bumgarner is gratefully diverted by their little two-man vaudeville stoner act. Never having had much patience for it, Posey slips off at some point, and Bumgarner thinks with a hollow feeling that that's probably for the best.

A week later, Posey brings his girl around to the clubhouse, pretty as a picture and sweet as pie, and when Bumgarner asks how long they've known each other, she smiles and says, "All our lives."

Bumgarner smiles back, says, "Just like a story," and then makes up some excuse, goes down to the batting cages to hammer away at pitching machine pitches until the buzzing sound fades out of his ears and he doesn't feel like punching the walls anymore.

It's his own damn fault, really. Of _course_ Posey had a pretty girlfriend waiting for him back home in Georgia. Of _course_ they've known each other since Sunday school and dated since junior year. Of _course_ Buster proposed to her on Christmas Eve, halfway across the wooden bridge over the frozen creek where they used to play trolls when they were little kids. All this, every part of it: stuff Madison should have known. Stuff he knows now, and god forbid he ever learn anything the easy way.

The next day, Bumgarner comes in in relief during the Giants exhibition game against the Diamondbacks. Posey has been in as Molina's substitute since the fifth inning, and he joins Bumgarner on the mound, his helmet and mask cradled in his mitt and tucked against his hip. Bumgarner tugs his cap brim low over his eyes, spitting dryly to the side.

"Awright, they wanna see what you can do with that slider against the lefties, so I'ma call for it down and away. Watch your arm angle, and watch where your front foot's coming down."

"Yeah yeah," Bumgarner says. "I got it."

"No worries if you don't throw a perfect strike to Rivera, I saw him in the PCL last year and that guy'll chase in the dirt if he's behind."

"Okay, thanks Buster." Bumgarner squeezes the baseball in his glove, wishing Posey would get back behind the plate already, put his mask back on so Bumgarner doesn't have to look at him anymore, let him _pitch._

"Hey," and the sharp tone brings Bumgarner's head up to find Posey glaring at him, a red pressure line from his catcher's mask bisecting his forehead, his hair a few shades darker and plastered down by sweat. "Get your head in the fuckin' game, Mad."

"It is," Bumgarner replies instantly. "I heard you, I know what we're doing."

"Fuckin' look alive then," Posey says, eyes squinted down to fiercely bright strips of blue in the Arizona sunlight. "Everybody's watching you now."

Posey chocks Bumgarner on the hip with his mitt before turning to jog back behind the plate. Bumgarner stalks around the back of the mound, dusting his hand with the rosin bag and yanking discontentedly at his cap brim, and then steps up to the rubber. All instinct now, digging his toe in and bending forward at the waist, letting his long left arm dangle bonelessly, the ball in his hand almost brushing the dirt. He closes his eyes for just a moment and takes a breath through his nose, tapping into the lizard-brain current of concentration that this job requires, before opening them to find his target once again.

Behind the home plate screen, a dozen scouts level their radar guns at him. In the Giants dugout, the pitching coaches huddle at the rail, hawking chaw into the dirt and glaring intensely towards the mound. There are ten thousand people crowded into this idyllic desert ballpark, capped and obscure behind sunglasses and Posey is right (always has been, about everything): almost every single one of them has their attention locked on Madison Bumgarner right now.

For all the good _that_ does him--Bumgarner (the idiot) still only has eyes for Buster Posey.

THE END


End file.
